


An Obituary of Sorts

by scoradh



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-16
Updated: 2014-03-16
Packaged: 2018-01-15 23:59:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1324123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scoradh/pseuds/scoradh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gregory remembers.</p><p>Written in June 2005.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Obituary of Sorts

Memories would have been a good thing if only he could remember them.

“Mind like a sieve,” his mother used to sigh. He wished so hard that he knew a way of stopping the trickling sand of memories draining away, like another of his ruined potions down the sink. He _wanted_ the images to stay in his mind, even if they made his eyes prickle and his chest tighten. What would he have if _they_ left, too? Everyone else was gone.

There was Pansy; he could remember her, the first time she’d smoked a cigarette. She’d borrowed one from him behind the greenhouses and coughed like mad on her first inhale. It was stupid, there was nothing difficult about smoking, even at the beginning. Pansy just liked to make a big deal out of everything.

There was Blaise, who could never sit still for more than five minutes and was always laughing. He laughed in the morning to see the sun come up and laughed when logs spat and jumped in the fire. He laughed in the middle of the night, because he didn’t care that everyone else knew that Draco was in his bed.

He’d loved to hear Blaise laugh. Once, Blaise had said, “Draco, you know that humans are the only creatures who kill their own kind?” Draco, sounding bored, had said, “Where’d you read that?” “In a Muggle book,” said Blaise, “I think it means that to be human is to hate. What does that make us if we love?” Blaise had laughed and he’d smiled to hear it, even if he had no idea what Blaise meant. Because of the Muggle comment, Draco didn’t speak to Blaise for weeks.

There was Millicent, who’d had a crush on Blaise from the first moment she’d seen him. She’d told him so, mainly because he wasn’t likely to say anything to Blaise. In return, he never told her about the laughter in the night. It was pretty obvious after a while anyway, but Millicent didn’t have to hear it said right out loud. She used to knit in first-year, horrid mucous-green socks that never matched and never fitted. Blaise, had once said to her that they looked like huge boogies from a diseased Muggle. After that she didn’t knit anymore.

There was Azalea Moon, who kept her long dark hair done in a plait. He didn’t know her that well; nobody did. She used to go off for walks every weekend for hours on end. Everyone knew she went in to the Forbidden Forest because she came back with odd, funny-looking plants in the evening.

The other boys had once dared to ask her what they were; she’d paused for a minute, her white hands spread over the bunches on the table in front of her. With a slow smile, she’d given Blaise a red leaf to eat; within seconds, he’d turned a splodgy purple and stopped breathing. She’d had the sweetest singing voice he ever heard.

There was Theo, whose hands were all burnt from a fire. He never knew why Theo didn’t get those healed, or Charmed away, but in the dim light of the common room the scars glowed silver. He had once seen Draco touch a fingertip to those scars when they were all studying at one table. Theo studied thrown back in his chair, as far back from the books as he could go. When Draco touched Theo, just once, without asking permission because he never did, Theo had opened his hand. The skin there was all wrinkled too and for a second, Draco put his palm over it. Then he said, “That’s disgusting,” and opened his Potions book.

His favourite memories were of Draco because he missed him the most. Draco had been so keen on everything -- taunting Potter, winning Quidditch, charming Millicent because she was the only one who refused to give him sweets. Draco had claimed a chair in the common room and everyone, after a while, called it “Draco’s chair”. Draco would sit curled up on the faded green cushions for hours and hours, just reading. That always amazed him, because books for him were always a confusion and a pain. Draco never failed to tease him about the finger he had to drag under the words as he read, but it was easy to forget that when his face was soft and a book was open on his lap.

He didn’t know what had happened to Crabbe. Oh, he knew what had happened to _him_ , had helped gather up the broken body and seen that it had a proper burial, but not what had happened. Crabbe had left Hogwarts soon after Christmas in seventh year and he didn’t see him again until the day of the green lights. He didn’t really miss Crabbe so much as miss the feeling that they were all complete with him there. Now he was the only one and he’d never be complete again.

Tombstones didn’t say much. They weren’t very chatty, either. Carefully, he went to each in turn, smoothing the lichen away from the engraving. None of them said “Dearly Beloved” or “Much Missed”. He’d seen Arthur Weasley’s grave and it had a huge list of things like that; the writing was so small it could barely be read. It wasn’t really fair. He was only one person, doing the beloved missing for so many. It took up nearly all his time. He was sure Harry Potter and Granger and the other Weasleys, even the widow, were able to share around their sadness. He couldn’t. He was the only one left.

He didn’t resent it, though. Sometimes he missed all of them so much he couldn’t breathe. If his boss noticed him stop working, he’d slap and yell at him. No one minded that sort of thing, down in the abattoirs. Slaughtering was not too good a job, even for a Death Eater.

“Former” Death Eater was what they called him. It wasn’t true. He _was_ a Death Eater because, now, that meant he remembered, and remembering meant he’d _be_ a Death Eater, always. It wasn’t the death of the Dark Lord that had stopped him being a Death Eater, or Dumbledore’s weary face as he proclaimed “Peace for our times” or even the ceremony where everyone knelt before him and the few others that were left and forgave them, just before they stripped them of their magic.

“It’s no good unless they see that you’ve won,” was what Blaise always said, when Draco suggested another half-baked evil plot to them as they got ready for bed. He’d be lying on his four-poster, with his olive chest bare; both Nott and Draco would look at him, Draco scowling but Nott’s hair hanging forward and hiding his face. Crabbe would roar from the bathroom, complaining that they’d used up all the soap.

He’d stop being a Death Eater only when he finally stopped remembering.

_finis_


End file.
